Microsoft announces Surface Book 3, ships May 21 starting at $1,599

Microsoft today announced the Surface Book 3, its most powerful laptop ever. That promises “up to 50% more performance” over the Surface Book 2 released 2.5 years ago. Battery life lasts up to 17.5 hours, a minor bump compared to its predecessors’ 17 hours. Starting at $1,599, it’s also $100 more expensive than the Surface Book 2. Both 13-inch and 15-inch flavors are available for pre-order now and start shipping on May 21.

Surface Book 3 is powered by the latest Intel 10th-generation Core CPUs and Nvidia discrete GPUs. There are Nvidia GeForce GPU options “with enough power to play the top Xbox Game Pass for PC titles at 1080p in a smooth 60 frames per second.” There’s also a new option: an Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 “to better meet the needs of commercial customers and higher education institutions.” Developers, designers, and professionals use the Surface Book for coding, compiling, and gaming. Microsoft wants to expand that list — Quadro graphics cards are better suited to applications like CAD, CGI, DCC, scientific calculations, and machine learning. Surface Book 3 also comes with up to 32GB of RAM and “the fastest SSD we have ever shipped,” Microsoft says.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we unfortunately cannot watch Panos Panay, head of engineering for all of Microsoft’s devices, take the stage and wax poetic about why you need this laptop. But Panay did explain this week that the pandemic has caused Microsoft to pull back on Windows 10X, a new flavor of Windows 10 designed for dual-screen PCs. Microsoft has pivoted Windows 10X toward single-screen devices, at least for now, with dual-screen devices coming later. We asked Microsoft whether the Surface Book 3 will get Windows 10X later this year, but the company did not respond in time for publication.

Surface Book 3 specs

Again, this release lacks Panay’s excitement. Here is how he describes the Surface Book 3 in one sentence: “Designed for professionals who need desktop-level performance from anywhere, this is the powerhouse workstation.” It’s just not the same. On to the full Surface Book 3 specs.

There is also now an NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 option, which is typically reserved for graphic professionals, engineers, and auto-CAD uses, rather than consumer-focused gaming and video editing.

The 13-inch model uses a similar GTX 1650 with 4GB GDDR5 and not the just-announced version with GDDR6 memory. Its performance is just slightly ahead of the older GTX 1050, but it does not seem to be as big a jump as the 15-inch GTX 1660 Ti.

For die-hard Surface users, the continued switch by Microsoft away from Marvel for its Wi-Fi chip to Intel’s more popular AX series is welcomed. Not only is there now Wi-Fi 6, which also works better on older Wi-Fi AC networks, but there is Bluetooth 5.0 too.